The last two decades witness that water is a politicized issue. The process of globalization has brought into existence a hierarchal structure in which the World Bank and the International Monterey Fund work in accordance to neoliberal theory. Development is, as a component in this process, placed high on the agendas of these multilateral institutions, and has become a global concern. The case of Bolivia’s water sector privatization has problematized the global consensus on neoliberal theory and its attempts to ensure development. The international system is a set of structures that shape the process of globalization, thus these have to be explored in order to understand the relation between neoliberalism, development, and equity. By placing Bolivia’s water sector privatization in the center of the research, concepts become researchable, while the neoliberal theory on development is tested. The policies of privatization did not succeed in targeting the poorest groups and equity was overseen. The study finds that the opposing views on whether privatization is a mean to achieve development are based in a clash on what development is. Dependency and power relations cannot be overseen. The clash is, in turn, translated into the relation between the global and the local, which is also shaped by contradiction in the context of globalization. Globalization is a process with a severe problem: there is no room for equity.